It is widely recognized that proper posture is important to the general well being of an individual. When sitting, a person's back should be substantially vertical and slightly arched in the lumbar region. This aids blood circulation and digestion, reduces muscle fatigue and reduces pressure on nerves. Proper posture also helps prevent hypostatic pneumonia by providing sufficient room in the chest cavity to permit the lungs to fully expand. Elderly, infirm and physically impaired patients often have difficulty maintaining a proper sitting position in a chair and may tend to slip, lean or slump unless restrained. One common practice used to alleviate this problem is to strap the patient into the chair with belts or a harness. While such a practice may keep the patient in the chair and may be convenient for the person attending the patient, the practice has serious drawbacks. First is the patient's loss of dignity from being strapped into a chair. Second, the patient, although upright, may have improper posture, potentially leading to muscle, nerve or blood circulation problems or to hypostatic pneumonia. Third, if the restraining belts are too tight, the may suffer discomfort, bruises or impaired blood circulation. On the other hand, if the belts are too loose, the patient may lean to one side, slump forward, or worse, slide down under the belts. If the slide is not stopped, the patient's neck can catch on one of the belts and the patient strangle to death. Although not well publicized, such incidences are not rare, particularly in nursing home environments.
One attempt to provide support to physically impaired patients is a large orthopedic chair disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,647,066 to Walton issued Mar. 3, 1987 and entitled "Orthopedic Chair". The chair includes a seat, a back rest, arm rests, foot rests and a tray, each of which is adjustable in a number of ways to provide support which is appropriate for a particular patient. The chair also has wheels and a rear handle so that it can be pushed from one place to another.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,234,228 to Flamm issued Nov. 18, 1980 and entitled "Modular Articulating Seating System For The Handicapped" discloses and orthopedic seat which resembles a large infant car seat. Support is provided for the patient's hips, torso, shoulders and head. Numerous pads of different thicknesses are employed in a shell which has several adjustable pivot points. An abductor is included with the seat cushion. The chair is said to be particularly well suited to patients having a variety of serious muscular or spinal disorders.
Such existing seats tend to be bulky which inhibits or prevents their use with existing chairs (such as with wheelchairs, ordinary table chairs or an automobiles). Furthermore, adjusting them can be time consuming and complicated and require the services of highly trained personnel to fit a patient. Other existing seats provide no adjustments and may be comfortable, if at all, only to a few "average" patients. Additionally, many of the existing devices are complicated and expansive, designed primarily for those with serious impairments. These are not well suited for typical nursing home or home-care patients who do not have major muscular or spinal disorders, but who simply have trouble maintaining an upright sitting position in a chair.
Portable devices for use in a wheelchair have been devised but they do not provide the complete support that is required for certain invalid patient. U.S. Pat. No. 4,643,481 to Suloff et al. issued Feb. 17, 1987 and entitled "Seat System For Preventing Decubiti" discloses a base and cushion adopted to be used with a wheelchair. The cushion is tapered to achieve desired support. A system that includes both a seat cushion and a lumbar cushion is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,912,788 issued Apr. 3, 1990 to Lanardo entitled "Seat Pad For Invalid Patients."
Despite the variety of proposed devices, it would be advantageous to provide a simple, lightweight support system to help patients maintain proper posture in an upright sitting position in an existing chair and which is both customizable for each patient and highly portable. It is also desirable that the support system be relatively inexpensive and have parts that can be quickly selected and assembled by someone having only a relatively small amount of specialized training.